Many people are curious about twins and multiples. One question on most peoples’ minds is “Were they conceived naturally?”. In our case, no. However, in my multiple births chapter, most of the twins were conceived naturally. I’m going to share our story over the next few posts.
I met John in 2001 at teacher’s college. I was thirty-one, he was forty-eight (yikes). One night a group of us was out at a pub and age differences came up. Someone opined that the maximum age difference is half your age plus seven. Well guess what? I was half John’s age plus seven. That night planted the seed in our minds and the rest is history.
John was separated with two daughters, aged 13 and 9 when we met. I knew I wanted kids and John didn’t want any more, plus he’d had the Dreaded V Word procedure. John decided that having me around was worth starting again and having the even more dreaded VR word. He had a vasectomy reversal the day after Jen’s fundraiser for my sister Madeleine. Stressful times.
After the reversal I used Taking Charge of your Fertility to chart my cycles and make sure we were making whoopie at the right times. After eight months and no embryo, I figured I better ramp up my efforts so we went to a fertility clinic where we tried one round of IUI. Then we had to wait, how I hated the waiting every month and, as always, it ended in disappointment.
So, I bought another book, How to Get Pregnant. This book said that IUI is a waste of time and money for many people and IVF has better success. We were off to a new clinic (mostly because the doctor didn’t even rembember my name at the first one).
For IUI the follicles are stimulated a little and the clinics don’t want too many eggs because they can’t control how many get fertilized. With IVF they want a lot of eggs so the dosages are high. Some women find they are very moody and feel terrible, luckily I was OK. I stuck myself with needles in my abdomen every day for 10 days. I had to go to the clinic for the daily ultrasound to check on the progress of my follicles. When all the follicles were nearing maturation I had to go in for the extraction which was the worst part of the process (other than the air in my abdomen ultrasound that was so painful I couldn’t walk). Up on the table, loaded up with drugs (pain meds and valium), out came the ultrasound but this one had a needle on it. The needle goes through the vaginal wall and into the follicle to extract the eggs one by one. I had 14 follicles so it took a few minutes. The eggs were passed through to the lab where they were waiting with John’s sperm. The lab techs used a procedure called ICSI, Intra Cytoplasmic Sperm Injection, they took single sperm cells and injected them directly into my eggs. 
For the next five days we waited and he lab called us daily with progress reports. We ended up with nine embryos which were declared of medium to poor quality. Before this experience I had no idea that an embryo could be rated on a scale of one to four. On day five, the doctors recommended we place four embryos into my uterus. Four was a scary number (think quadruplets or more) but the doctor assured us that our odds weren’t good otherwise. So, back in the stir-ups for me. The embryos were placed in me through a catheter, a relatively easy procedure.
Then, the two week wait again. I was too impatient to wait for the blood test so I was peeing on sticks once again. I got a faint positive on day 11 (I still have the stick) and then a darker positive on day 12. Blood tests confirmed we were pregnant. We were soooo lucky we got it on the first try because we couldn’t have come up the $12,000 again!
Here are our poor quality embryos and our exceptionally high quality girls
Stayed tuned for the pregnancy and delivery stories! Don’t worry, they won’t be TMI, no youtube videos will be linked.
Arggh ….didn’t proof read…corrections in second last paragraph: that’s and your.
Kath, monozygotic twins are only really “identical” at the moment they split. From then on their environments are different, even in the womb. Monozygotic twins have the same nuclear DNA but their mitochondrial DNA (which changes over time) is not the same. I’m not sure why the “beauty mark” on only one, I need to read up on it some more.
Shawn, I don’t think it makes you and ignorant jerk to be curious, it is very fascinating. However, I wouldn’t ask a stranger at the park if her multiples are natural, it’s too personal.
Multiples get a lot of attention, some people find that really annoying but I don’t really mind. Except for the comment “double trouble”, that like saying “you’re kids are conniving brats!
I just flashed back to the Juicy Fruit ads with twins and the jingle is stuck in my head!
This is really interesting! A few questions, related more to the title of your post. As a parent of multiples, can you shed some light on the etiquette around asking if they were conceived naturally? Is it OK to ask? Does it make me a jerk to be curious about that aspect of their parental journey? Should I not even care about that, and focus on the beautiful kids (as is the case with your adorable daughters!)?
Thanks,
Signed, a potentially ignorant jerk/curious parent
The whole thing is so fascinating. The hatching thing (who knew?), the fact that they’re monozygotic, the rating of quality, and that S can have a mole but not F, even when they’re “identical”.
They’re beautiful and well worth all the work it took. That photograph of them (post-hatching) is exceptional, too!
Christine,
It is really fascinating isn’t it. Even when I was just in the charting my cycle phase I learned so much about my reproductive system. I remember thinking, girls should learn this in high school, it could really help them monitor their own health.
As I said, the ICSI can up the odds of identical twins as can “assisted hatching”. The lab makes a small hole in the embryo just before it is put back. I didn’t know that human embryos hatched out of the outer shell just prior to implantation.
S has a little “beauty mark” (mole) that started to appear when she was four months old, very handy for telling them apart.
man this is fascinating!!
especially how four turned into one and that one turned into 2!!
I was wondering if they were identical. I thought identical twins were pretty rare with IVF.
Can’t wait to read more!
The girls are beautiful! Is that a small birthmark above one of their eyes?
Hi Jen. Yes those four are the ones that were put back. They were the best of the bunch but all were considered poor quality.
And yes they are identical (monozygotic) so only one of the embryos “took”, and it did split. I’m not sure what the chances of that are but identical twins are more likely with ICSI because the pipette used to inject the sperm forms a little hole and makes it easier for the egg to shed it’s shell before implantation (I had no idea that happened before).
John and I are very thankful we went with the four…it was nerve racking because we did not want higher order multiples and the risks that accompany them. Think about it, all four could have split once or more! The Dionne quintuplets were monozygotic, all from one embryo, amazing isn’t it.
There are a lot of ethical issues involved with fertility treatments, higher order multiples can put strain on health care systems and more often have complications that lead to disabilities. Canada is pretty good about self-regulating, but not all clinics.
In the US and other countries are not so good at it and will create situations like the woman who had 8 and women who are older than 50.
Just realized I may have gotten ahead of the story. Sorry! I am trying to be patient!
AMAZING, Erin! So, a few questions: 1) Are the girls from the “poor quality” eggs? and 2) Are they identical? So, does that mean that only one of the eggs “took” and it split?? If so, what are the chances of THAT?!